Kennedy v. Chase

California Supreme Court Jan 20, 1898 No. S. F. No. 493Published

Before: Fleet

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Holding. The court held that an employer or property owner is not liable for injuries sustained by an employee or invitee who deviates from the area required for their employment or business purposes to pursue personal convenience, as the duty of care does not extend to such areas.

Issues

Whether an employer is liable for injuries sustained by an employee in an area of the premises not required for the performance of their duties.
Whether a ship owner owes a duty of care to an invitee who wanders into areas of the vessel outside the scope of their invitation for personal convenience.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“An employee who leaves that portion of his master’s premises where his duties require him to be, and goes about to his own convenience, becomes a licensee.”

Synopsis

Negligence—Corresponding Duty—Injury to Plaintiff—Nonliability of Defendants—Nonsuit.—There can be no negligence, without the existence of a corresponding duty upon the part of the persons against whom the negligence is charged; and there can be no liability of defendants for an injury to the plaintiff where, under the circumstances shown, it is clear that defendants were under no legal duty or obligation to protect plaintiff from the injury he received; and, where the evidence for the plaintiff discloses that no such duty existed, the plaintiff is properly nonsuited for want of proof of negligence of the defendants.

Id.—Master and Servant—Safe Place for Work—Extent of Duty of Master—Private Excursion of Servant.—The duty of a master to furnish his servant with a reasonably safe place in which to work is limited to the premises where the employee is required to be for the purposes of his employment, and does not extend to his protection while upon private excursions outside of those limits, taken solely upon his own account.

Id.—Employment of Servant upon Lighter—Private Excursion to Vessel—Injury in Hatchway—Nonliability of Master.—Where the servant’s place of employment was upon a lighter, from which a vessel was being loaded, and his work consisted m shoveling ballast from the deck of the lighter onto a staging erected outside of the vessel, and the servant made a private excursion upon the deck of the vessel, upon his own account and for his own convenience, to place his coat upon a main hatchway unnecessarily remote from the place of his employment, and, upon resuming his coat after quitting work, fell into a smaller hatchway on the deck which was outside the limits of his employment, and was injured by the fall, the master owed no duty to protect him against such injury, and cannot be held liable therefor.

Id.—V oluntaby Entbyupon Vessel out op Scope op Employment—Licensee at Suffebanoe—Nonliability of Ownebs of Vessel.—The plaintiff, in going about upon the vessel without the permission or invitation of the owners or master thereof, and outside the scope of his employment in loading the vessel, was a mere licensee at sufferance, and the owners of the vessel owed no duty to protect him against injury in a part of the vessel where he was neither invited nor expected to go; but the extent of the liability assumed by the owners of the vessel was that their decks should be reasonably safe where the. plaintiff was required by his employment to traverse them, and not elsewhere.

VAN FLEET, J. Appeal by plaintiff from a judgment of nonsuit. The complaint alleged that plaintiff was employed by defendants as a stevedore to assist in placing ballast in the ship “John A. Briggs”; that defendants negligently and carelessly left open and unguarded a certain trimming hatch, in a dark and dangerous place on the freight deck of said ship, where plaintiff, “in performing his duties as such stevedore, and in the course of his employment, was compelled to go”; that plaintiff, while in the performance of his duties, fell through said hatchway and suffered the injury complained of. It was alleged that the defendant Chase, was a master stevedore, and that the other defendants were the owners of the vessel.

The evidence, an understanding of which will be facilitated by reference to the accompanying diagram, tended to show these facts:

[639]

The defendant Chase was employed as master stevedore to put ballast in the after part of the ship mentioned, which was lying at the wharf in the port of San Francisco, and was engaged in that task. The work was being accomplished by bringing the ballast material on a lighter alongside the vessel, to the point marked: “port hole,” shoveling it from the lighter onto a staging erected on the outside of the ship, between the lighter deck and the port hole, and from thence through the port hole onto the freight deck, where it was taken and dropped through the hatchways into the hold of the ship. On the day in question plaintiff was employed by the foreman of defendant Chase, as a laborer, to-assist in putting in the ballast, his work being confined to the lighter, and consisting (in company -with several fellow laborers), in shoveling ballast from the deck of the lighter onto the staging.

The mode of ingress and egress for the men to and from their work was by means of a plank from the dock to the main deck; by a ladder down the “after hatch,” as shown on the diagram, to-the freight deck, and thence, for those working on the lighter and staging, from the after hatch through the port hole.

Plaintiff went to work about 1 o’clock in the afternoon. On-reaching the freight deck, instead of going direct to the port hole, he, without direction or request from anyone, walked forward to the point marked “main hatch,” and left his coat on the coaming of that hatch, at “Y”; on quitting work at 6 o’clock in the evening plaintiff returned through the port hole, went again to the main hatch, secured his coat and started, as he testified, by a direct course from that point to the ladder at the after hatch to go ashore, but on his way, in some manner not made entirely clear, managed to walk into the trimming hatch, marked “A,” fell through into the hold and was injured.

Kennedy v. Chase

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